Performance In People
Pascall House,
Westridge Business Park
Cothey Way, Ryde,
Isle of Wight, PO33 1QT
t: (01983) 568080
f: (01983) 568517
info@performanceinpeople.co.uk

Case Studies

ACIS Group

Performance in People worked with ACIS (housing) to develop their own internally sustainable mystery shopping programme conducted by its tenants

ACIS Group is a registered social housing company with its HQ based in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. The Company owns and manages 3,600 residential properties, employing 108 people with an annual turnover of £9.4 million and assets of £35 million.

As an ambitious and progressive housing company ACIS was looking for an internally sustainable and an even more effective way of monitoring the service it delivers to its Tenant Customers. The Training and Development team at Performance in People were consulted about the possibility of training ACIS Tenants to effectively Mystery Shop its own organisation.

Performance in People were a perfect fit to work in partnership with ACIS. By adapting their ‘Developing your own in-house mystery shopping capability’ service to fit ACIS needs, they were able to deliver this innovative and ground breaking approach to overcoming organisational challenges with Data Protection legislation when it comes to Mystery Shopping within the Tenant Housing environment.

The initial exercise once the ‘Shoppers’ had been through their training activities was to check and assess the ACIS employees’ voice mail (answering machine) messages compliance with the Company’s Style Guide, and that the calls were returned within two working days.

The second exercise was to enquire about improvements to their property to assess the performance against responses provided.

The mystery shopping evaluations were assessed under the following criteria:

Did ‘out of hours’ Voice Mail comply with Company Style Guide?
Were calls returned within 2 working days?
How accurate and consistent Information was provided over the phone?
How efficient Information was sent through the post?
How well were Transferred calls dealt with?

The Shoppers’ findings together with their recommendations have been reported to the company by their own mystery shoppers, and are being positively addressed.

ACIS’ own conclusions

"Receiving professional, external training from Performance in People made a considerable difference to the approach to Mystery Shopping, and the confidence demonstrated by the Mystery Shoppers."

"Tenant customers have control over what services are reviewed, and are able to test those services in a measurable way."

"Managers are now able to focus their attention on services that are demonstrated, and proven to need improvement, rather than having to respond to anecdotal evidence"